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Last week in plain English

Last Tuesday, we introduced a new feature, Yesterday in Plain English, in which we recapped some recent blog content and developments at the Court in language that we hoped was more accessible to non-lawyers.  Today, we do the same for the rest of last week’s coverage, while simultaneously trying to make the workings of the Supreme Court a little less mysterious.

We will start with some highlights from our daily news and blog round-up, which – in addition to the more specialized commentary that you will often see in the blogosphere – includes articles directed towards a general audience.  The Wednesday and Thursday round-ups of the mid-week news coverage focused on the actions the Court took last Monday, when it picked several cases to hear this Term and refused to hear many more.  The Court granted certiorari in – i.e., it decided to hear – three new cases, which eventually will be scheduled for oral argument in the spring.  Articles in the L.A. Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Slate covered the Court’s decision to address those cases, and our Tuesday “Plain English” post summarized each of them.

The round-up also included coverage of the Court’s decision not to hear several cases, including the dispute over a bankruptcy deal that saved the automaker Chrysler. In that case, a federal court of appeals had permitted Chrysler to sell off a large chunk of its assets very quickly.  A group of pension funds had asked the Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision, but last Monday the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear the case.  Instead, it ordered the appellate court to vacate its ruling – i.e., throw it out so that it isn’t “precedent” governing later cases – because the conclusion of the sale meant there wasn’t really anything left to fight over in court.  Two articles at the Wall Street Journal discussed the Chrysler case, as did JURIST, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, the Detroit News, and the Cato @ Liberty blog.

Finally, Wednesday’s round-up also included continuing news coverage of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a high-profile campaign finance case in which the Supreme Court will decide when corporations have a free-speech right under the First Amendment to spend money as part of political campaigns.  As a New York Times article recounted, the Court had heard arguments in the case once before, in March of this year, but asked the parties to come back in September to argue it again, this time addressing broader constitutional issues about corporations’ free speech rights.  The Court won’t decide any more cases until January, so there won’t be a ruling in the case before then.  A piece in the Huffington Post speculated that when the Court does decide Citizens, it will rule that the government must end a ban on some corporate campaign spending.  The Friday round-up also linked to a New York Times opinion piece raising the possibility that in ordering re-argument and more briefing the Court may have “overreached.”

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On Tuesday, Lyle analyzed some recent developments in another of this term’s high-profile cases, Kiyemba v. Obama.  In Kiyemba, the Supreme Court will decide whether a federal judge can order Guantánamo Bay prisoners – in this case, a group of detainees who are members of China’s Muslim Uighur minority – released into the United States.

Last week, the Obama Administration announced that it would move some of the Guantánamo detainees to Illinois for long-term detention.  As Lyle reported, this change in policy might lead the Supreme Court to direct the lower courts to consider how to decide the Kiyemba case.  It is also possible that the Administration will try to shift the Court’s focus away from the detainees’ right to challenge their detention and towards its own authority to use immigration laws to justify holding them.

In a follow-up post Thursday night, Lyle reported that the Obama Administration does plan to keep some detainees – including the Uighurs – at Guantánamo Bay, while transferring others to the newly acquired detention facility in Illinois.  Given this new development, and assuming that the Kiyemba case goes forward, a ruling by the Supreme Court might mean that detainees held at the Illinois prison could also ask federal courts to review the justifications for their imprisonment, and possibly release them into the United States.  Furthermore, if the Supreme Court accepts the Obama Administration’s argument that the immigration laws allow the government to hold detainees in the “war on terror,” the Administration might then be free to hold the Illinois detainees indefinitely on the ground that they were “awaiting deportation.”  No matter what the Supreme Court decides in Kiyemba, Lyle pointed out that its ruling will have significant implications for the way we understand the relationship between the authority of the president and the authority of the court system.

Finally, we posted a piece Thursday on some new developments in a legal dispute over government regulation of campaign spending by nonprofit advocacy groups.  In that case, a group supporting abortion rights had challenged a set of Federal Election Commission regulations which prevented it from engaging in certain forms of campaign spending.  The D.C. Circuit – the federal court of appeals here in Washington that considers challenges to many federal regulations – struck down the rules.  The Obama Administration considered petitioning for certiorari in the case – in other words, asking the Supreme Court to overturn the court of appeals’ decision – but no such petition will be filed.